Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
A cast that includes actors of such high quality as Liotta, DeNiro, Pesci, Paul Sorvino, Lorraine Bracco among others is not, never was, never will be "paint by numbers".
Furthermore, literally nobody said this in the year of the movie's release.
For one thing, before Goodfellas, most people's ideas of the mob was based on The Godfather (a movie that had basically two-three Italian-Americans -- Al Pacino, John Cazale, Talia Shire, the rest including Marlon Brando weren't Italian-American). A few years before Goodfellas, you had a crime comedy like Married to the Mob which had Michelle Pfeiffer and Alec Baldwin (two non-Italian Americans) as leads. Likewise, I need to repeat this, the lead character of Goodfellas, played by Ray Liotta, is Irish-American, the lead character of Casino, played by DeNiro, is Jewish-American.
The only reason anyone has to think these movies are paint-by-numbers is because it influenced literally every gangster and crime movie that came afterwards.
These movies are not and never were and never will be formulaic.